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Press Release
Three Good Reasons for Celebrating at the ESO/ST-ECF Science Archive Facility
Great Demand for Data from New "Virtual Observatory"
13 December 2000
Due to a happy coincidence, the ESO/ST-ECF Science Archive Facility is celebrating three different milestones at the same time: 1) its 10th anniversary since the establishment in 1991, 2) the 10,000th request for data, and 3) the signing-up of active user number 2000. This Archive contains over 8 Terabytes (1 Terabyte = 1 million million bytes) of valuable observational data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) and other ESO telescopes. Its success paves the way for the establishment of "Virtual Observatories" from which first-class data can be obtained by astronomers all over the world. This greatly enhances the opportunities for more (young) scientists to participate in front-line research.
Just 10 years ago, on the 1st of January 1991, the ESO/ST-ECF (European Southern Observatory/Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility) Science Archive Facility opened. It has since served the astronomical community with gigabyte after gigabyte of high-quality astronomical data from some of the world's leading telescopes.
The Archive, which is located in Garching, just outside Munich (Germany), contains data from the 2.4-m NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, as well as from several ESO telescopes: the four 8.2-m Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory, and the 3.5-m New Technology Telescope (NTT), the 3.6-m telescope and the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at La Silla.
The Archive is a continuously developing project - in terms of amounts of data stored, the number of users and in particular because of the current dramatic development of innovative techniques for data handling and storage.
In the year 2000 more than 2 Terabytes (2000 Gigabytes) of data were distributed to users worldwide.
The archiving of VLT data has been described in ESO Press Release eso9930.
Celebrating the 10th anniversary
Due to a happy coincidence, the Archive passes two other milestones almost exactly at the time of its ten-year anniversary: the 10,000th request for data has just arrived, and active user number 2000 has just signed up to start using the Archive.
Dataset number 10000 was requested by Danish astronomer Søren Larsen who works at the University of California (USA). He asked for images of galaxies taken with the Hubble Space Telescope and expressed great satisfaction with the material: "The extremely sharp images from Hubble have provided a quantum leap forward in our ability to study star clusters in external galaxies. We now know that some galaxies contain extremely bright young star clusters. These might constitute a "link" between open and globular clusters as we know them in the Milky Way galaxy in which we live. We are now trying to understand whether all these clusters really form in the same basic way".
Active user number 2000 is Swiss astronomer Frédéric Pont , working at the Universidad de Chile: "We use observations from the ESO VLT Unit Telescopes to map the chemical and star-formation history of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group. The stars we are looking at are very faint and we simply need the large size and excellent quality of VLT to observe them in detail. With the new data, we can really move forward in this fundamental research field".
To celebrate this special occasion, a 4-page brochure has been prepared that describes the Archive and its various services. The brochure can be requested from ESO or ST-ECF and is now available in PDF format on the web.
As a small token, the two astronomers will receive a commemorative version of the photo that accompanies this release.
The ASTROVIRTEL initiative
One of the major new initiatives undertaken by ESO and ST-ECF in connection with the ESO/ST-ECF Science Archive is ASTROVIRTEL (Accessing Astronomical Archives as Virtual Telescopes), cf. eso0009. It is a project aimed at helping scientists to cope efficiently with the massive amounts of data now becoming available from the world's leading telescopes and so to exploit the true potential of the Archive treasures.
ASTROVIRTEL represents the European effort in an area that many astronomers considers one of the most important developments within observing astronomy in the past decade.
The future
The head of the ESO/ST-ECF Science Archive Facility, Benoît Pirenne, believes that the future holds exciting challenges: "Due to the many improvements of the ESO, NASA and ESA telescopes and instruments expected in the coming years, we anticipate a tremendous increase in the amount of data to be archived and re-distributed. It will not be too long before we will have to start counting storage space in Petabytes (1 Petabyte = 1,000 Terabytes). We are now trying to figure out how to best prepare for this new era".
But he is also concerned with maintaining and further enhancing the astronomical value of the data that are made available to the users: "Apart from improving the data storage, we need to invest much effort in building automatic software that will help users with the tedious pre-processing and 'cleaning' of the data, thereby allowing them to focus more on scientific than technical problems".
Important dates
10-year anniversary of the Archive: 1.1.2001
10,000th data request: 17.11.2000
2000th active user: 10.12.2000
[1] This is a joint Press Release by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Benoît Pirenne
Head of ESO/ST-ECF Science Archive Facility
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-(0)89-3200-6433
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Lars Lindberg Christensen
Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre (Garching, Germany)
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-(0)89-3200-6306
Cell: +49-(0)173-38-72-621
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Richard West
ESO Education and PR Dept.
Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-(0)89-3200-6275
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
About the Release
Release No.: | eso0042 |
Legacy ID: | PR 26/00 |
Name: | Hubble Space Telescope, Very Large Telescope |
Type: | Unspecified : Technology : Observatory |
Facility: | Other |


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Salmon are coming back to Westmoreland Park
Mar 26, 2013 at 10:33 AM 0 Comments
We've had a lot of exciting news about restoration efforts and partnership in Crystal Springs Creek over the last couple of years, including the bird and wildlife sitings along the creek, and the 24-hour construction blitz that replaced one of the nine culverts that block fish passage.
Now it's time for the next phase of the project, which involves replacing the culvert under SE Tacoma Street and restoring wetland habitat in Westmoreland Park, where Crystal Springs Creek currently flows into a large, shallow pond. Construction will start this summer, and will result in improved habitat and cooler, cleaner water in Crystal Springs, as well as other improvements to the park.
There are nine culverts on Crystal Springs Creek between SE 28th Avenue and the creek's confluence with Johnson Creek. Environmental Services and partners are working to restore the watershed for the the migratory salmon and steelhead that use the creek, as well as the people, river otter, heron, eagles and frogs that live there. City partnership with local and federal agencies and community partners, is making it possible to replace all nine culverts by 2015. To date, five of the culverts have been removed or replaced, and for the first time since the early 1970s, winter salmon are returning to the headwaters of Crystal Springs Creek in Reed College Canyon. The Tacoma Street culvert project this summer will be the sixth culvert improvement.
For more information about the project and construction impacts, see this news release from Portland Parks and Recreation and the Environmental Services website for Crystal Springs.
photo (c) U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
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. . . PEACE and INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING
Welcome to the website of the international Felix Count von Luckner Society!
OUR MAIN GOALS ARE, to support
This website is the place where you can learn about all our goals and the means how to reach them. Of course, we will provide information on Felix Count von Luckner, the "Sea Devil" from World War I, the globetrotter, cosmopolitan and freemason, the exceptionally gifted speaker and entertainer and last but not least: the sailor von Luckner.
The embassy of the USA sent us the following to honour our work conserning the rememberance of the issue "World War II". We feel very proud about that!
Almost daily we receive questions concerning the life of the Count, new information from people from all over the world. Why are people still interested in Felix Count von Luckner and his life?
We wish to give answers.
We are very happy, that from the year of our foundation (2004) many new members from more than 20 nations found their way to us and applied for membership.
We got many help during all the years, with advices, information, donations in money and in kind and of course by the work for our members. We cordially thank all those, who supported us.
Please, enjoy our website and feel free to contact us for questions. We will be happy to answer them.
The team of the international Felix Count von Luckner Society.
In this year we will for the second time open our museum at the "night of the museums" – we will keep you informed.
will ring again on Friday at 10.55 a.m. Uhr on Friday, April 19, 2019
Join us on the Market Place!
More information on the "Bells of Peace of Halle" you will find a little booklet (in English and in German)
More information you will find >>>HIER<<<
- – - The actual information – - -
from now on you will find our news in the separate link (left side under the link "Home") and HERE
June 9, 2012: Count von Luckner's birthday
Saturday 9. Members of our society met near the new plaque for those who saved Halle in 1945 from destruction. The reason for that meeting was the birthday of the Count and think of him in good memory.
We could talk to other Halle citizens and could thereby inform about our intentions and what we have in mind in detail.
Highly appreciated was that Hans-Dieter Kuhrt handed over the tie or belt the words "Danke" and "Hallenser" are written of. Mr. Kuhrt had laid this down on April 19 under tears, when the above mentioned plaque was unveiled.
We will preserve this in our archive and show this in our museum. Perhaps we can even welcome Mr. Kuhrt to our society.
May 30, 2012: Donation in kind, autographed von Luckner picture
Today we received a donation in kind from Australia.
Mr. Vaughn Dixon sent an original big picture of Count von Luckner to us even signed by him in 1938.
Probably the autograph was given during von Luckner's cruise with the "Seeteufel", when he went to the South Seas, New Zealand and Australia.
Thank you, Mr. Dixon, for your kind donation, which is appreciated by us. We will preserve the picture in our archive and museum.
April 19, 2012 Good news: we got Felix Count von Luckner honored here in Halle.
The background: for the third time the church bells rang on April 19, 10.55 a.m., the time when in Halle World War II ended 67 years ago. This tradition is organized by our society.
This time we got a plaque unveiled remembering those Germans, who helped saving Halle from being destroyed. The name of Count von Luckner is among them. This was initiated by the FDP, a liberal political party in Germany.
About 250 citizens were with us listening to the bells. Then a prayer was held in the Marketplace.
In the private department store Wöhrl we afterwards unveiled the plaque. The names of Karl Huhold, Walter Hülse, Theodor Lieser, Felix Graf von Luckner and Nikolaus Weins are to be seen. Almost under tears an old man put flowers in front of the plaque thanking us and Felix Count von Luckner for his role in World War II. The old man as a kid was with fears waiting for the bombers in the basement of his house, the bombers did not come.
Thanks to the FDP for their work and the owner of the building, that the FDP and we could place the plague at their house.
Here you will find the film made by our local TV station..


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Pedro Álvares Cabral
Our editors will review what you've submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
Pedro Álvares Cabral (born 1467/68, Belmonte, Portugal—died 1520, Santarém?) was a Portuguese navigator who is generally credited as the first European to reach Brazil (April 22, 1500). (The Spanish explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, who had been on Christopher Columbus's first voyage to America, may have reached Brazil slightly earlier in 1500 than Cabral.) His expedition was also the second from Europe to reach India via the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope (Vasco da Gama had done so in 1498).
The son of Fernão Cabral, a nobleman, and of Isabel de Gouveia, Pedro Cabral was heir to a long tradition of service to the throne. He himself enjoyed the esteem of King Manuel I of Portugal, from whom he received various privileges in 1497; these included a personal allowance, the title of counselor to his highness, and the habit of the military Order of Christ. Following up on da Gama's pioneering voyage, three years later the king entrusted him with the command of the second major expedition to India, expressing "the great confidence we have in Pedralvares de Gouveia, nobleman of our household." Cabral was named admiral in supreme command of 13 ships, which set out from Lisbon on March 9, 1500. He was to follow the route taken earlier by Vasco da Gama, strengthen commercial ties, and further the conquest his predecessor had begun.
In accordance with da Gama's instructions, based on his experiences during the first voyage, Cabral was to sail southwest so as to bypass the becalmed waters of the Gulf of Guinea. This course, which later became known as the "circle around Brazil," had the added advantage of providing the Portuguese with opportunity to reconnoitre along the coast of the lands to the west. They had previously sighted those lands, which belonged to them in accordance with the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which divided the still almost completely unknown New World between Spain and Portugal.
He sailed westward under favourable conditions, and on April 22 Cabral sighted the land he named Island of the True Cross. Later renamed Holy Cross by King Manuel, the country ultimately took its modern name, Brazil, from a kind of dyewood, pau-brasil, that is found there.
Cabral is reported to have made a special effort to treat the inhabitants kindly, receiving them on board his caravel. Nonetheless, he took formal possession of the country and dispatched one of his ships to Portugal to inform the king. Thenceforth, maps of the region showed Portugal as ruler of a great expanse of land with vaguely defined boundaries that came to serve as a point of call on the long voyage from Europe to the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean.
After a stay of only 10 days in Brazil, Cabral sailed for India, in a voyage that was plagued by a series of misfortunes. On May 29, while the fleet was rounding the Cape of Good Hope, four ships were lost with all hands aboard. The remaining ships cast anchor on September 13, 1500, at Calicut (now Kozhikode), India, where the zamorin (dynastic ruler) welcomed Cabral and allowed him to establish a fortified trading post. Disputes with Muslim traders soon arose, however, and on December 17 a large Muslim force attacked the trading post. Most of the Portuguese defenders were killed before reinforcements could arrive from the Portuguese fleet lying at anchor in the harbour.
Cabral retaliated by bombarding the city and then by capturing 10 Muslim vessels and executing their crews. He then sailed for the Indian port of Cochin (now Kochi), farther south, where he was affably received and permitted to trade for precious spices, with which he loaded his six remaining ships. Cabral also made port at Carangolos and Cananor (Cannanore; now Kannur) on the same coast, completed his cargo, and on January 16, 1501, began the return voyage to Portugal. On his way, however, two ships foundered, and it was with only four vessels that Cabral finally reached the mouth of the Tagus River in Portugal on June 23, 1501.
King Manuel was pleased at the outcome of the undertaking, in spite of the misfortunes that had beset it. He is said to have at first favoured making Cabral head of a new and more powerful expedition, but in the end it was Vasco da Gama and not Cabral who was appointed to that command. Accounts differ as to the reason for the king's change of heart. One chronicler attributes it to disagreement over division of authority within the new fleet; another offers the explanation that da Gama opposed the appointment of Cabral on the grounds that da Gama himself already held the title of admiral of all the fleets that might leave Portugal for India and that the disasters of Cabral's expedition should disqualify him for the new mission.
Whatever the true explanation, Cabral held no further position of authority at the Portuguese court. He retired to his estate in the Beira Baixa province of Portugal and spent his remaining years there. His tomb at Santarém was identified in 1848 by the Brazilian historian Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen.


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The Takács Quartet's roots in Bartok's string quartets run deep. Founded in 1975, the foursome, originally all Hungarians, learned Bartok's music with the violinist Zoltán Székely, the composer's close friend. Its two recordings of the quartets are excellent, and quite different from one another. This season they are touring all six, spread over two concerts. The Boston cycle began on Thursday with the odd-numbered quartets.
Conventional wisdom holds that there are two schools of playing this music: the "modernist" school, which emphasizes the forward-looking aspects of Bartok's language, and a more "Romantic," less astringent style. I am increasingly skeptical that this neat division, if it ever existed, does now. This music is too familiar, too much in our ears, to admit of such easy binaries.
If the distinction does exist, the Takács' brilliant and energetic performances transcended it entirely. Everything they did had a kind of melodic sweep to it. Even in the compact Third Quartet, their sound was warm enough to make that piece's fearsomely opaque textures inviting. But the Takács — violinists Edward Dusinberre and Károly Schranz, violist Geraldine Walther, and cellist András Fejér — also plays with complete clarity, so that each unusual sound effect materializes. Parts of the Third sounded almost lighthearted, but its coda had an edgy intensity that made it sound almost dangerous.
What the Takács projects most of all is a mastery of and almost ease with these pieces, the product of the decades of combined experience of these four musicians. Each quartet unfolded in a way that seemed to make perfect sense without sacrificing the music's sheer excitement. Perhaps the best example was the First Quartet, often treated as a sort of apprenticeship for the advances that would follow. Not here: The First came off as a work of muscular invention and physical intensity.
Many groups attack the Fifth Quartet's jarring opening rhythms. By contrast, the Takács began more deliberately, allowing them to highlight the inner three movements, which, it became clear, contain some of Bartok's most inspired and gloriously weird textures. But none of that can be accomplished without the lucidity and precision the Takács achieved. The finale was pure rhythmic adrenaline, and the hurdy-gurdy tune that emerged at the end was so idiomatic that the audience laughed in appreciation.
There are different ways to play this music, but it is hard to think it can be done better. The Takács conclude their cycle on April 11 with the Second, Fourth, and Sixth Quartets. You should hear them.
David Weininger can be reached at email@example.com.


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Inland Empire
The Inland Empire, also known as "the IE", is not an autonomous kingdom - it is a manure-scented dusty sprawl located in Southern California, centered around the unremarkable cities of Riverside, Ontario and San Bernardino. It is best known for its wretched identity crisis, whereby it simultaneously despises and envies the greater counties of Los Angeles and Orange to its immediate west. The name itself betrays this jealousy - calling itself an empire despite its lack of emperor or culture to speak of, other than a hayseed mentality clashing with a Hollywood aspiration. At the very least, as you might expect, from this clash a fine hilarity ensues.[1]
Visiting the Inland Empire
If you come to the Inland Empire for a visit, you will not be the first. If you enjoy your stay, you will be. There are a few places to go and things to see here, but none of them are interesting, compelling or not dangerous.
It should be noted that "Inland Empire Sightseeing" is practically a Googlewhack, so it would take an internet forensic expert to expand this list of places to go and things to see beyond what our weeks of research have managed to dig up.
Ontario Mills Mall
Yes, I am serious. One of the first things you get to when Googling for Inland Empire sights is a shopping mall. This is not a joke, but it is very amusing. There is little to say about this mall if you have been to any shopping mall in the universe. If you have never been to a shopping mall, there is also little to say about them in general. What, they have stores. And a food court.
Victoria Gardens
This is the second thing you will find. It is also a shopping mall. I am not joking. Really, I'm not. I wish I were. At least Victoria Gardens is a pretty nice mall.
Interesting IE communities
The Inland Empire is made up of 60 communities (30 "big" cities and 30 cow towns), each one of them with something fun or interesting to boast about. Corona has a large midget population, Fontana is the birthplace of the Hells' Angels biker gang, Murrieta has a cool Cold War nuclear missile installation just west of the town (which is now a golf course), and San Jacinto is a hideout for a bunch of freaks in the World Church of Scientology headquarters by the Gilman Hot Springs (actually a toilet) resort. Temecula has many wineries where people go to free wine tastings as a way to get drunk for free. Oh, and they have pot.
The acclaimed docu-drama
Filmmaker David Lynch documented life in the Inland Empire in 2006 with his film of the same name.
Though lacking the traditional cinematic story arc in its structure, the film is a faithful slice-of-life rendition of life here. Each character is meticulously crafted from an amalgamation of various actual IE personalities, each line of dialog is faithfully rendered from actual IE conversations, and each harrowing situation is derived from actual IE events.
For instance, like most IE women in trouble, the main character, played by a studied Laura Dern, has confused the events of real life with the events of a Hollywood script; this is the IE identity crisis we know and love. Was there an actual murder or was it just in the story? These points of confusion plague every IE resident daily, and Mr. Lynch has executed them to perfection. Here is an example from the film, taken from an actual encounter between a freaked out IE woman in trouble and her creepy neighbor one morning:
Neighbor: Is there a murder in your film?
Nikki: Uh, no. It's not part of the story.
Neighbor: No, I think you are wrong about that.
Nikki: No.
Neighbor: Brutal fucking murder!
Nikki: I don't like this kind of talk; the things you've been saying. I think you should go now.
For an unflinching look at life in the IE, this movie is not to be missed.
Interesting historical facts
One must dig deep to find any interesting history regarding the Inland Empire that does not involve serial killing.[2] But for the latter, see below.
It is perhaps a little bit interesting historically that many of its cities are named after Spanish land grabbers that slaughtered the indigenous Native American populations[3] that lived in their areas. Oh, wait. That would fall under the category of "serial killing" also. Wouldn't it? Shouldn't it?
Suffice it to say then that the history of the IE is a dotted line, told at best in parentheses. For more fascinating history, see some other nearby American locale.
Nobody works in the Inland Empire besides exotic dancers, church ministers and Subway sandwich artists. Everyone else works in Orange County (aka "the OC"). This might make you think it causes major rush hour traffic problems, as it would in any normal suburban area. But the Inland Empire is a unique place, and "major rush hour traffic problems" becomes a laughable understatement, uttered only by those who cannot know the sheer gut-wrenching agony of it.
The blame for this horror sits squarely on the elitist residents of a small upscale city that acts as gatekeeper to Orange County called Yorba Linda. The birthplace of (and location of monuments to) such shamed and discredited world leaders as former Cheetah Girl Sabrina Bryan and former president Richard Nixon, Yorba Linda considers itself the last line of defense against the unwashed masses from the IE. As such there are literally no access roads between the two areas. Entry into OC is limited to one three-lane freeway through Yorba Linda, for three million commuters. Except for the lesser known entry way through the Carbon Canyon (aka Canyon of Cabrones). An escape route provided for the citizens of Chino Hills. As it takes 3 days to get through the hippie infested canyon, bubble gum flavored meth is handed out for the journey. Bring lunch.
Fun Inland Empire serial killers
The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders
The 1928 killings at a Wineville chicken ranch tops the list of fun serial killings that the IE is known for. Wineville, now known as Mira Loma because they weren't ever called the Mira Loma Chicken Coop Murders, would have been called a typical one traffic signal town if it had had a traffic signal. Like so many IE residents at the time (as now), our murderous hero was inbred, of course. But it is unfair to lump all inbreds in with him - they don't all abduct children, lock them in a chicken coop, then systematically molest them and force them to murder each other. But Gordon Stewart Northcott certainly did, giving inbreds throughout the region a bad rap. The Clint Eastwood film The Changeling portrays these events in all their Inland Empire glory, though it fails to mention that Northcott was his own half-uncle.
The Riverside Prostitute Killer
The 1986-91 whore killings centered around the Riverside suburb of Rubidoux thrilled IE residents for five exciting years. Everyone sat glued to their televisions to see if their favorite IE whore was going to be the next victim. With AIDS a growing concern at the time for the customers of the victims, OC businessmen throughout the region shuddered to think they might have to switch providers in the event that the one they knew they could trust was offed. So you can imagine the relief when, after many thrilling years and over $100,000 spent, investigators finally tracked down the skilled and elusive Bill Suff when he was stopped for an illegal U-turn. The lesson from this exciting tale is, pay attention to those "No U turn" signs. They'll get you every time.
The Killer With A Conscience
Wayne Adam Ford is really sorry that he cut off drug-addicted prostitutes' breasts and carried them around with him in his pocket.[5] So sorry, in fact, that he brought one with him to the police station where he tearfully turned himself in. After he described in grisly and accurate detail his dismembering, disemboweling, and other mutilations of four different women, he was asked why he thought he had done it. His response - anger at his ex-wife. When asked if he was aware that every fucking ex-husband in the whole damn Inland Empire is mad at his ex-wife - hell, the cop who was interrogating him was probably royally pissed at his ex-wife - but they don't go around taking it out on innocent girls, he said, "They don't? Hm. Something's clearly wrong with me, then, huh?" When asked why he was turning himself in now, he said he was afraid his ex-wife - the only one he was actually mad at, mind you - was going to be next. Such is the logic of the mind of a crazed serial killer. Dexter would be pissed. I mean, where's the code?
The Zodiac Killer
Finally, it would be doing a grave disservice to the Inland Empire, as well as another blow to its identity crisis, to fail to note that the infamous Zodiac killer, while centered around San Francisco, is also the most likely suspect in numerous Riverside area unsolved murders. Any chance the IE has at identifying with greatness, we ought to give it that due.
- ↑ In fact, the greatest contribution that this area has made to the culture of California is its availability as the target of hilarious satire. As we will see, this article is not averse to taking advantage of same.
- ↑ And digging deep is anathema to Uncyclopedia, thank you very much
- ↑ Juan Murrieta, if you need a for instance. "[H]e helped move the Indians to the Pachanga reservations" indeed.
- ↑ Though his winning recipe calls for "beef", word is Sweeney Todd may have appreciated the dish.
- ↑ I am above the joke about giving new meaning to the term "breast pocket" - I just won't do it. Sorry.


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Page last updated on
Members of the OECD held a High Level Meeting in Paris this week, releasing a Communique on principles for internet policy-making on June 29 2011. Although we applaud the openness of governments and the OECD secretariat to include non-governmental stakeholder constituencies in the meeting, as a worldwide network promoting the use of the internet for social justice and sustainable development since 1990, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is concerned about the overwhelming emphasis the Communique places on enforcement of intellectual property laws.
In particular, we worry that the Communique's approach to intellectual property rights does not fully appreciate the complexities of the online media environment.
The Communique was not endorsed by the Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council —a coalition of more than 80 civil society groups from across the globe that provide input into the development of OECD policies relating to the Internet— of which APC is a member. We support the CSISAC position.
The approach to intellectual property requires more nuance
Our own research on media piracy in South Africa shows that intellectual property laws can represent a significant barrier to access to information and culture especially in poor communities. However the debate surrounding intellectual property too often reveals an overwhelming bias towards enforcement — including the extension of criminal penalties, increasing of police powers, streamlining of the judicial process and increasing surveillance of the internet.
As detailed in the research, which was produced for Media Piracy in Emerging Economies by the Social Sciences Research Council, we found that a narrow focus on the criminal aspect of the violation of intellectual property to be "increasingly counterproductive for all parties, from developing-country governments, to consumers, to the copyright interests that drive the global enforcement debate."
We believe the approach to intellectual property issues should be more nuanced. Creators of content have rights that need to be protected – should they so wish. But the enormous potential of the internet to increase the development and sharing of knowledge should not be put at risk through the enacting of overly-stringent laws — an approach we note is favoured mostly by large corporations rather than individual creators.
APC questions the statement in the Communique that intellectual property protection is a "fundamental tool for the advancement of innovation and creativity on the Internet." In fact, in our estimation much of the internet's success is the result of the open source, collaborative efforts of unpaid volunteers contributing to a global information commons.
Anyone involved in the development of the internet over the last twenty years knows that transgression has probably been a far greater driver of innovation than IP protection.
We do not want to imply that illegal use of content is a sustainable alternative. What we believe is that policy makers should focus on keeping the internet open, encouraging its potential for strengthening the information and knowledge commons.
And let those with business interests on the internet apply their resources and creativity to come up with models that thrive on openness rather than on restrictions.
Ambivalence towards intermediary liability
Further, while the Communique frequently refers to the free flow of information and freedom of expression, it fails to give these the primacy that they deserve.
Anriette Esterhuysen, APC executive director, expresses her concern about the Communique's "unmistakable ambivalence towards intermediary liability".
"While we recognise that there is a space for self-regulation in the internet industry, far greater emphasis should be placed on ensuring that intermediaries are not held liable and not vulnerable to enforcement by States to violate users' rights without due process that adheres to international human rights standards," she says.
The Communique states that "Internet intermediaries, like other stakeholders, can and do play an important role by addressing and deterring illegal activity". APC believes that this is a dangerous idea as intermediaries are neither equipped nor qualified to enact policy, especially around sensitive issues like freedom of expression.
On this subject the June report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Frank La Rue, notes that "[t]he range of services offered by intermediaries has flourished over the past decade, mainly due to the legal protection that they have enjoyed from liability for third-party content". His report goes on to suggest that "intermediaries, as private entities, are not best placed to make the determination of whether a particular content is illegal, which requires careful balancing of competing interests and consideration of defences." As such, the Special Rapporteur, and APC, believe that the restriction of content should never be delegated to a private entity.
Thumbs up for the focus on access and openness
Despite this, there are many positive signs coming out of the meeting in Paris. The Communique wisely recognises the need for "more ubiquitous access to and use of broadband Internet networks […] at affordable prices" and that public investment may be necessary to promote the growth of networks, especially in remote areas.
As it stands today, affordable access is not ubiquitous. The internet is still a very uneven playing field. What's more, the importance of openness — which the document stresses — is constantly at risk, even though it is so deeply embedded in the internet culture. Therefore emphasising and further exploring net neutrality and what it means in an evolving internet should get far more attention than it does in this Communique.
The reality is that the internet is a public space, even if it is not publicly owned. Therefore it is vital that the public interest is a primary internet policy-making principle. We need to recognise the evolving nature of the internet as a public space that is developed, operated and used by multiple stakeholder groups. Public interest therefore has to feature prominently as a principle in internet policy.


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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Mardracus Wade scored 14 points as Arkansas secured its first unbeaten run through the Southeastern Conference at home since the 1997-98 season with a 73-62 win over Texas A&M on Saturday.
The Razorbacks (19-12, 10-8) also secured their first overall winning mark in the SEC in five years, the last time the school reached the NCAA tournament. Arkansas closed out the regular season 18-1 at home, with its only loss coming to then-No. 6 Syracuse on Nov. 30.
Wade was one of five players in double figures for the Razorbacks.
The loss was the fourth in five games for Texas A&M (17-14, 7-11), which played without leading scorer Elston Turner because of a hand injury.
Fabyon Harris led the Aggies with 16 points.


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109 University Square Erie, PA 16541
105 Commercial Center Drive Ruskin, FL 33573
With the University's central and strategic location in downtown Erie, Gannon is uniquely positioned to maximize its impact in a well-defined, contiguous and manageable University Neighborhood. The focused efforts on the University Neighborhood will allow Gannon to maximize its impact toward increasing the sustainability and viability of downtown Erie and the neighborhoods surrounding the campus.
As illustrated below, the Erie-GAINS Neighborhood encompasses the area bordered by Presque Isle Bay to the north, Parade Street to the east, 11th Street to the south and the Bayfront Parkway to the west, which consists of all or part of Census tracts 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 and 10.


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Lack of breaker maintenance escalates a destructive arcing fault and leaves an office high-rise building with major fire and smoke damage.
When a prolonged arcing fault in the 480V electrical system of an 18-story California office building destroyed some electrical equipment, the result was devastating. A maintenance worker was fatally injured, scores of tenants were displaced due to fire and smoke damage, the building was without power for more than two weeks, and the owner had to close the site for more than two months for repair and cleanup.
In the end, the owner faced a bill of $22 million in physical damages as well as another $10 million in business interruption claims. Needless to say, the building owner and tenants expected some fast answers. Who was ultimately responsible for this destruction? The owner filed damage claims through his insurance company against the building maintenance company and manufacturers of many of the electrical components involved in the failure.
Our task, as forensic engineers, was to represent one of the defendants in the investigation and ensuing trial. After arriving on the scene the day after the accident, we found that an early version of an aluminum bus duct system distributed electric power in the building to panels on each floor. The 5000A main bus duct ran from the basement to a switchboard on the seventh floor. From there, bus duct feeders extended from one feeder circuit breaker to the 18th floor, and a second one ran down to the basement. On each floor, the bus duct fed distribution panels (consisting of fused disconnect switches) accessible through non-interlocked doors.
We decided the problem started in a second-floor panel, when a maintenance person tried to replace 480V fuses to restore escalator service. The arcing fault fatally injured the worker and vaporized most of the interior panel. According to witnesses, neither the 2000A feeder circuit breaker nor the 5000A main circuit breaker tripped during the minute-long arc. The secondary-side fuses on the utility's transformer (located in a vault under the street) finally cleared the fault.
To help our client, we had to establish the cause of the arcing fault. We also needed to find out why the feeder and main circuit breakers didn't interrupt the fault current and limit the damages. Our investigation revealed the fault occurred on the line side of the disconnect switches (inside the panel). When the technician removed the fuse, this caused movement in one of the fuse clips. The movement, coupled with degraded insulation and close spacing of the bus bars, created a line-side short circuit. The resultant fault current should have tripped the breakers, but it didn't. We had to learn why.
We inspected the damaged panel, fuses, and bus ducts to trace the course of the arcing fault. We reviewed engineering drawings of the panel and later learned from the manufacturer that these panels were designed specifically for the structure. We carried out fault-current calculations using the Kaufmann and Page (General Electric engineers) low-voltage arcing-fault model, and calculated arcing time based on our estimates of the weight of aluminum, copper, and steel vaporized by the arc. We also conducted arc-damage tests at the High-Current Laboratory of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
The circuit breakers weren't equipped with ground-fault protection. That's why they didn't trip on low-level line-to-ground arcing-fault currents.
After years of preparation, the trial lasted 10 months. During that time, experts from a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines argued about the cause of the arcing, the magnitude of the arcing-fault current, and whether the breakers should have tripped. To help the jury understand the technical testimony, the parties used hundreds of exhibit boards with photographs, photomicrographs, scanning electron micrographs, fuse curves, circuit-breaker tripping curves, time lines, and engineering drawings. The jury saw the damaged remains and mock-ups of the electrical equipment. We also showed a video that reconstructed the progress of the arc. The case settled at the close of evidence, just before it would have gone to the jury.
As a result of the accident, the owner renovated the building to bring all of the services up to code. Installers interlocked the fuse-compartment doors on the busway fuse panels with the switches. The obvious lesson from this accident is maintain your circuit breakers and other protective equipment—as the old saying goes, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
Kusko is corporate vice president, Exponent Failure Analysis Assocs., Natick, Mass; Jacobs works for Harvey, Siskind, and Jacobs, LLP, San Francisco.


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Isn't great that PC gave me and Joy each a Pink Expression to give away! We are so happy to be able to giveaway this awesome machine! Make sure you leave a comment on the Pink Expression Giveaway blog post by clicking here ==> PINK EXPRESSION GIVEAWAY
Here is another project I made using one of the NEW Hello Thursday cartridges. It is made using the awesome NEW Car Decal Cricut cartridge! Seriously these stick people are the cutest!!
The little skier is cut at 4 1/4". |
This stamp is from Papertrey Ink. |
The snowflakes stamp is from Close To My Heart. I added the rhinestones for a little extra. |
The paper is from SU!(I hope you are not getting sick of it yet. I just love it) |
The white cardstock is core'dinations. |
Subscribe to Courtney Lane Designs by Email


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Summer School Review provides free, detailed profiles of summer schools across the USA. The site lets you compare schools within your state and learn more about how summer schools work.
Summer School Review is a partner site of Boarding School Review, the leading online resource for evaluating private secondary boarding schools, Private School Review and Public School Review, unique resources for researching public and private day schools across the USA. This network of sites aims to help families learn about and make the best educational choices for their children.
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New High Frequency Amplifier Harnesses Millimeter Waves in Silicon for Fast Wireless
(PhysOrg.com) -- New imaging and high capacity wireless communications systems are one step closer to reality, thanks to a millimeter wave amplifier invented at the University of California, San Diego and unveiled on Feb 11, 2009 at the prestigious International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, Calif.
The new silicon-based amplifier marks progress toward high capacity wireless communications systems that will operate at millimeter wave frequencies (70-110GHz) and could provide data transfer rates as fast as 10 Gigabits per second over a kilometer. Toward this goal, the new amplifier provides both high gain (the ability to increase the volume of a signal) and high bandwidth (the ability to do it over a broad range of tones). It has a direct transmission line path from the input to the output that carries electromagnetic waves—undisrupted—across the surface of a silicon chip. Amplification "stages" along this transmission line boost the signal power by monitoring the signal amplitude and generating feedback in just trillionths of a second, feedback that injects additional energy in phase to the signal. The amplifier provides record-breaking gain of 26-30dB at 100GHz and allows wave propagation along the chip surface.
James Buckwalter, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering, invented the amplifier and named it the Cascaded Constructive Wave Amplifier.
"Cascaded constructive wave amplification is a new circuit architecture that can push silicon into new operating regimes near the fundamental limits of Moore's Law and allow the ultra high data rates that the millimeter wavelength range of the electromagnetic spectrum offers," explained Buckwalter.
The millimeter wavelength range of the electromagnetic spectrum is relatively unexplored for commercial use, in part, because it has been difficult and expensive to build the necessary high frequency amplifiers. Many of today's millimeter wave amplifiers, for example, require exotic and expensive semiconductor materials.
"We're exploring how silicon can play a role at frequencies exceeding 100 Gigahertz. Silicon has the advantage of allowing inexpensive integration of microwave and now perhaps millimeter wave components," said Buckwalter.
A is for Amplification
Today's Wi-Fi and WiMax systems operate at a frequency of 2.5-5GHz and are capable of handling megabits of information per second. "If you want higher data rates, you need to find ways to transmit information wirelessly at rates faster than what is available at 2.5 Gigahertz. This new amplifier is aimed at opening millimeter wave frequency bands, where much more bandwidth are available and where higher data transfer rates, as fast as 10 Gigabits per second over a kilometer, are possible," explained Buckwalter.
Point-to-point wireless communication is a low-cost approach to getting optical fiber speeds. "You could use this amplification method to boost signal strength of a 100 Gigahertz signal from the transmitter in your ISP and also at the receiver in your home to detect the signal," explained Buckwalter.
Feedback Tames the Wave
"The really cool thing about this chip is that it's the first time traveling waves have been amplified along an uninterrupted transmission line...we've found a new architecture that allows higher gain than what people supposed for waves traveling near the speed of light on silicon chips," said Buckwalter.
The periodic amplification stages along the transmission line are crucial to the amplification process. They monitor waves as they propagate through the transmission line and spontaneously inject energy into the wave without interrupting its propagation down the transmission line.
In particular, the strength of the wave is constantly monitored at the output side of each amplification stage. Feedback is provided through a fast transistor that feeds energy into the input of the transmission line and hits the wave with that energy 2.5 trillionths of a second later—a quarter of the wave's period. In this way, the wave is constantly being strengthened as it moves uninhibited through each of the amplification stages along the transmission line.
This new amplifier design is distinctly different from existing amplifier technologies. The new Cascaded Constructive Wave Amplifier provides high gain—the signal gain increases exponentially with the number of amplification stages—without absorbing and regenerating the wave energy. The cascaded amplifiers that are found in all cell phones also have high gain——but they absorb and regenerate signals.
"We've taken a wave that travels along the surface of the silicon near the speed of light and found a way to amplify the signal strength without interrupting the wave," said Buckwalter. "We have found a way to tame millimeter waves on silicon."
More information: ISSCC 2009 Paper: "A 26dB Gain, 100GHz Si/SiGe Cascaded Constructive Wave Amplifier," by James Buckwalter and Joohwa Kim from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.
Source: University of California - San Diego


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Health |
The Bitter Pill
That first day at Phoenix House, Joe remembers, his last heroin high was wearing off. He felt the familiar beads of sweat. Nausea began to creep to his throat. Perfect conditions, his doctor said; bupe works only when patients are in withdrawal. So Joe curled back his tongue, placed the little hexagonal tablet underneath, and waited. He felt it slowly soften to a gritty paste and disappear. It still amazes him how quickly it worked. He didn't feel high, didn't feel withdrawal symptoms, didn't even feel medicated; he just felt better. "It took away the pain," he says. "It even took away the craving. I had my strength back, and I was eating sooner than I ever had in detox. I got clarity when I took that first pill." The details of his addiction - kicked out of high school, stripped of a college basketball scholarship, and ultimately sent upstate to prison - already seem like stories from someone else's life. Bupe won approval as an addiction treatment in late 2002. Sold by British firm Reckitt Benckiser and prescribed under the brand name Suboxone, bupe is a synthetic opiate that pushes the same buttons as heroin or painkillers like Vicodin, Percocet, or OxyContin, only without the high or any other significant side effects. It frees recovering addicts from cravings and crashes, allowing them to focus on counseling, work, and relationships. "It is the first real innovation in treatment in 40 years," says Phoenix House medical director Terry Horton. Before bupe, there was mainly methadone, an amber syrup that offers similar relief from opiate cravings but is highly habit-forming. By law, methadone must be dispensed at special clinics and, for most patients, only in single daily doses. Widely prescribed beginning in the 1970s, methadone was medical science's first real attack on addiction, and study after study showed it prevented relapses and deaths by overdose. But public opinion swelled against it. Neighborhood groups battled methadone clinics, where patients congregate daily for their meds. Politicians charged that junkies were merely swapping one habit for another. Methadone has been controversial among addicts, too. Some rejected it for producing a powerful sedative effect that makes it difficult for a recovering addict to perform job duties. Others took methadone illegally as a cheap tranquilizer. "People get a methadone habit because it feels like what you were taking before," says Solinda, a former Wall Street office manager, heroin addict, and occasional methadone abuser who also went through bupe detox at Phoenix House. Patients on bupe do become physically dependent on the pill - as do people taking medication for most chronic conditions. Suboxone, though, has no strong side effects. Nor can users get high by taking a larger dose - in other words, no inching up from dependence to addiction. Bupe is also safer than methadone - which, like any strong opiate, suppresses breathing if too high a dose is taken - and easier to taper off. And instead of visiting a treatment center every morning or quitting cold turkey, addicts can get a bupe prescription from their regular doctor. This offers real appeal to addicts, particularly white-collar ones, who cringe at the stigma of methadone lines. "You're just taking medication," Solinda says. "You don't feel sick. You don't feel high. It makes you feel stronger as a person." For all these reasons, doctors and mental health professionals expected bupe to take off quickly. But that has not been the case. While Reckitt Benckiser won't disclose sales data, Shaun Thaxter, vice president of pharmaceutical marketing, says that 5,000 doctors are now prescribing buprenorphine. However, according to two prominent bupe researchers, sources inside the company late last year said only half that number is prescribing either Suboxone or Subutex, a form of pure bupe often used at hospitals for detox. And Herbert Kleber, director of the substance abuse division at Columbia Medical School, says the company told him it had recorded only about 1,500 prescribing doctors nationwide last summer. Reckitt Benckiser estimates that since bupe was introduced, 100,000 patients in the US have used it, whether in the form of a single dose during detox or in ongoing treatment. But Yale scientist David Fiellin, a longtime bupe researcher, says that medical privacy laws make it impossible for the company to accurately count the number of patients taking the drug. "They can't know," he says. A more reliable indicator is the number of prescriptions filled by pharmacies, which are required to report their data to state health agencies. In New York City, home to an estimated 200,000 heroin addicts and perhaps two to three times that many prescription opiate addicts, some 34,000 people were on methadone maintenance throughout 2004, while only about 1,000 people filled a bupe prescription last year. "It's depressingly few," says Lloyd Sederer, New York City's deputy executive commissioner for health and mental hygiene. So why has bupe's progress been so sluggish when it's clearly a superior innovation? There are several reasons. The general practitioners who were meant to write most of the prescriptions have proved ambivalent, at best, about treating addicts. Lawmakers have bungled regulations; at one point, there was even a federal law barring methadone clinics from dispensing bupe, despite their experience and reach within addiction circles. Meanwhile, Reckitt Benckiser has been conservative in marketing the new drug. It's all enough to drive Sederer crazy. Reducing the number of active addicts in the city would help check the spread of HIV and other diseases that hang out on dirty needles. It would lessen the number of deaths by overdose. It would cut crime; 20 percent of all convicted felons in New York test positive for opiates. It might even save money. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that every $1 spent on drug treatment erases $7 in social costs ranging from unpaid ER bills to prison overhead. But Sederer remains hopeful. He and Andrew Kolodny, a city health department psychiatrist, have launched a campaign to place at least 60,000 New Yorkers on bupe maintenance by 2010 - nearly double the number on methadone. They are turning city staffers into part-time drug reps to push bupe to health workers and patients at needle exchanges, methadone and HIV clinics, residential treatment centers, hospital wards, even prisons. They figure that if the bupe brand surges in these settings, then the harder-to-reach patients like white-collar professionals will hear about it, either when they make the occasional foray from their middle-class world to buy drugs, or when the city's inroads on addiction make headlines. Then these patients will ask their doctors for prescriptions, which in turn will make the medical community more comfortable with treating addiction as an illness. "We're doing all the work for the drug company," Sederer says laughing. "Here you have a couple of psychiatrists launching a marketing campaign!" Andrew Kolodny looks uncomfortable at the head of a long conference table in the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where staffers are filing in for a final briefing on the bupe campaign. Soft-spoken, with a shy demeanor and a disarming smile, Kolodny, 36, joined the health department a couple of years ago while doing a fellowship at Columbia Medical School for doctors interested in clinic or government work. Tomorrow, the city's marketing literature, written by health department staff, will arrive from the printer. "Hopefully, by the time we're done today, everyone will feel comfortable delivering this information," Kolodny begins encouragingly. It's cram time. Kolodny reminds his colleagues of the drug's advantages. He stresses that bupe in the form of Suboxone is safe and almost impossible to abuse, a huge selling point at many of the clinics they will visit. Suboxone has a second active ingredient in the mix, he explains, an anti-overdose drug called naloxone. It does nothing if you take bupe as directed. But if you sniff bupe or inject it or otherwise try to pack enough into your bloodstream to get high, the naloxone acts like a chemical booby trap, erasing the effects of any opiate, bupe included, and bringing on sweaty, nauseating withdrawal. "That's the last time you'll do it," Kolodny says dryly. The length of treatment varies, with some doctors preferring a short detox and others believing addiction is best treated as a chronic condition - like depression or diabetes - with ongoing medication. "Any questions?" he asks. One employee is still confused about why Reckitt Benckiser needs help marketing its drug. If anything, pharmaceutical firms promote their products too well, turning millions of otherwise sensible Americans into Googling hypochondriacs, and doctors into vending machines. "They are not a pharmaceutical company," Kolodny replies. "They make Lysol." "Woolite, also," adds another employee. "And French's mustard," Kolodny says, smiling a bit. The room breaks up laughing. "How did they come up with this?" another staffer asks. "Were they injecting Woolite?" "I hope they're not making all this stuff in the same lab," a guy in the back mutters. Reckitt Benckiser, "the world's number one in household cleaning," according to company literature, stumbled upon the compound in the 1970s. A few years later, scientists at Kentucky's Addiction Research Center discovered that buprenorphine reduced opiate craving. It bound tightly to the brain's opiate receptors - nerve endings designed to catch the body's pain-easing, pleasure-pumping endorphins - so that even a low dose blocks the effects of heroin or anything else a relapsing addict might take. In the early 1990s, when bupe began its slow path toward FDA approval, it faced more obstacles than the average drug. Until the early 20th century, you could order just about any narcotic you wanted from the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog: morphine, heroin, opium. But in 1914, Congress passed the Harrison Narcotic Act, barring doctors from prescribing opiates to known addicts. Congress amended the act in 1966 to permit methadone as an addiction treatment and again in 2000, to allow doctors to prescribe bupe. But it tacked on strict conditions in 2000, partly in response to methadone's troubled history. First synthesized in the 1940s by German scientists and scooped up after the war by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, methadone attracted attention in the addiction community in the 1960s. That's when a husband and wife team, doctors Marie Nyswander and Vincent Dole of Rockefeller University, found that with a daily dose of methadone and some counseling, opiate addicts had a much better chance of staying clean. Public health officials heralded the discovery as a revolution. To get methadone to the masses, Congress created a class of tightly regulated health clinics to treat nothing but addiction and barred them from issuing any prescription but daily single doses of methadone. Some 40,000 New Yorkers were signed up by the mid-1970s. But the public success fizzled as NIMBY neighbors protested the location of clinics, illicit methadone hit the street, and critics slammed maintenance programs as nothing more than legalized addiction paid for by the government. "Methadone is stigmatized, destroyed," says Edwin Salsitz, a leading methadone expert based at New York's Beth Israel hospital and a regular instructor in buprenorphine licensing classes. "It's a medical tragedy." Meanwhile, methadone regulations effectively ostracized addiction treatment from the medical mainstream. Most med schools leave it off the curriculum for all but psychiatry students, who get a mere four weeks of exposure. When young doctors train at big-city hospitals, most of their encounters with addicts are hard cases showing up in the ER in the middle of the night. "The top attendings make fun of them," Salsitz says. An opportunity to bring addiction treatment back into the mainstream appeared when lawmakers amended the Harrison Act in 2000 to enable bupe to come to market. It made a step in that direction by allowing general practitioners to prescribe the new drug. Yet it barred methadone clinics from prescribing the pill at all. This set the stage for some treatment centers to view private-practice physicians as rivals. Yale's David Fiellin, who attended several early training courses, recalls clinic workers standing up to share horror stories about hardcore addicts and suggesting that family physicians, if they prescribed the new drug, could expect the same in their waiting rooms. After bupe had been on the market a year, the law was amended to permit methadone clinics to prescribe it, but only under the same rules used for methadone (one dose per visit), which erases one of bupe's major advantages - that you don't have to schlep to a clinic every day. Meanwhile, many methadone providers have remained openly skeptical of the new med, fearing that it will further stigmatize methadone, or siphon off their most stable patients. The government reimburses methadone programs for the number of patients they oversee, not for the specific services they provide, so the payment for a stable patient who takes a dose and goes to work subsidizes treatment for more fragile clients with multiple addictions, mental illness, housing and unemployment issues, and more. The regulatory problems didn't stop there. Influenced by tales of unscrupulous methadone clinics taking on huge case-loads for the reimbursement cash, Congress barred doctors from maintaining more than 30 bupe patients at a time. And in a monumental blunder, the law classified giant HMOs like Kaiser Permanente, as well as hospitals, as single providers, with the same 30-patient cap that Kolodny has in the solo practice he maintains on evenings and weekends. Four years later, the law remains unchanged. One clear sign of the law's unintended consequences: The world-renowned Addiction Institute of New York (better recognized by its old name, Smithers) doesn't mention bupe in its advertising because with a 30-patient limit, it fears it would have to turn people away. Meanwhile, even private-practice physicians open-minded enough to seek bupe training find that it reinforces old stereotypes. "The courses are a disaster," says Columbia's Herbert Kleber, who has a contract from the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment to redesign the curriculum. The classes rely on scenarios instead of letting doctors interact with live patients - who tend not to be the monsters that many doctors imagine, Kleber says. The message that comes across? "Addicts are a difficult group to deal with. They'll rob your office blind and steal your nurse's purse," Kleber says, frowning. "You're a general practitioner: Tell me if you're going to prescribe." The result is that bupe faces an uphill battle to find its way into doctors' offices. Kolodny steers a big government sedan through the busy streets of Queens, past a billboard that promises, somewhat disturbingly, The World's Boldest Corrections Officers, then over the bridge to Rikers Island, where he'll talk about bupe to a group of prison docs and nurses. "Best-case scenario, everyone hears my speech and thinks this is an amazing treatment," he says. "But they may not want to be innovators. They may be content in what they're doing." What they're doing is maintaining inmates on methadone, trying to tame their addictions before they return to the street. Kolodny hopes that with the enticement of meds donated by Reckitt Benckiser - seed drugs - the prison will agree to put some inmates on bupe instead. Then, when they check out, they can tell their neighbors about it and increase the pressure on local doctors to write prescriptions. A security escort leads Kolodny through two guard stations and a razor-wire fence that stands between roughly 17,000 inmates and a postcard view of the Manhattan skyline. He hands Kolodny a visitor ID - "Lose this and I'll fucking kill you," he instructs - and asks what brings him to Rikers. "You're talking about replacing methadone?" he says, skeptically, before Kolodny corrects him. "We're pretty anal about change here," the guard warns. "We don't like change." A group of 25 doctors and nurses is already waiting when Kolodny arrives at the prison's health offices. He surveys the collection of bored, tired faces staring back at him, shuffles his notes, and begins. "With any new medication with significant advantages, you'd see ads on TV, like you do with Zoloft, you'd see ads in journals, docs would start prescribing it," Kolodny says. That obviously hasn't happened with bupe. The doctors ask about side effects. Good news there. They ask whether it shows up on a drug screen (methadone does, so many people who might face a urine test at work avoid it). Nope, Kolodny says, a bupe patient's urine tests negative - more good news. They ask about the potential for black-market dealing; inmates learn to hold their methadone in their throat, spit it back up, and sell the spit. That's pretty much impossible, Kolodny says, to nods of approval. Will inmates be able to keep receiving bupe after they leave prison? Some, but not all, Kolodny says. That's because of the nearly 300 doctors in New York licensed to prescribe bupe, only a handful will accept Medicaid, even though it covers the treatment. Any more - well, the city is working on it. As he leaves through the tall, steel gates, Kolodny breaks into a smile. "I didn't think people would greet us this warmly," he says, genuinely surprised. "I don't know if I'd go so far as to say we achieved buy-in, but it was a start." On the drive back to his office downtown, Kolodny's Treo rings twice, just minutes apart. Two more people looking for bupe treatment at his private practice. "That's weird," he laughs. Or, maybe, an encouraging sign. Copyright: 2005 Wired |
Top or Page Health Directory Home |


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Last November, Richard Smith gave a talk on potential power sources for OLPC at the Energy Harvesting USA conference.
Ars Technica recently reviewed the XO-3 and XO-1.75 with an eye towards the future implications of low-power computing, discussing power generation by hand, by bike, and by water wheel as well as through solar panels.
Of course we're not done with the low-power revolution; phones and computers – even the latest XOs – are still too power hungry to be quickly and easily charged by ambient light (as solar calculators are) or by hand (despite the simplicity of hand cranks, legs are much better suited for generating power than arms and hands). So while alternate charging works it requires explicit attention and preparation.
But in places without electrical infrastructure that have some steady source of power, computers and computing can increasingly be part of everyday life.


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This article is more than 1 year old
Sun management stumbled on EU Oracle probe
JavaOne done
With US regulators in the bag, it must have seemed like just a matter of time before Oracle's planned $5.6bn purchase of Sun Microsystems would get European approval.
Such was the level of confidence, Oracle boasted in June it fully expected the deal would close "this summer" - putting that at the end of September in calendar terms.
That was according to an Oracle attorney in an official statement. The fact he suggested a date in an official communication from a company that's notoriously parsimonious with information was significant.
The European Union's decision to investigate the deal, then, not only surprised Oracle - it also appears to have wrong footed Sun's senior management team. Publicly.
Just one day before regulators said they'd investigate, one of Sun's three product group leaders - a top executive inside the company - convened a special "all hands" meeting to re-assure employees the deal would go ahead and that reports of an investigation were just "rumors".
A Sun source has told The Reg the head of Sun's cloud computing group, senior vice president Dave Douglas, flew from his east-coast base to Sun's Menlo-Park, California, campus to personally re-assure staff.
"[He] told us that the rumors about the EU commission deadline were just that, and that Oracle had a team in Brussels that was negotiating with the commission," the source told us.
"He led us to believe that no announcement would be made the following day, and that the EU commission and Oracle would make an announcement when an agreement was reached."
The meeting was for Douglas' cloud computing group, but also saw other employees attend and dial in via phone. The cloud computing group is one of three business units created during a massive re-organization last year that led to the birth of the application platform software group under executive vice president Anil Gadre and the systems platforms group under executive vice president John Fowler.
Failure to hit a summer closure is not just embarrassing for the two companies, it's also hurting Oracle in an area it values - the wallet. Chief executive Larry Ellison has claimed the delay caused by the investigation is costing him $100m a month.
It's unclear how far Sun or its senior managers are actually engaged in pressing the case in Brussles on behalf of Oracle and Sun employees. The majority of lobbying - along with the footwork on the acquisition and integration of the two companies - now appears to be in the hands of Oracle staffers.
Sun's out-going captain Jonathan Schwartz was last Wednesday morning spotted well outside the corporate and lobbing loop, in conversation on his cell and sporting a baseball cap outside a coffee shop near his Noe Valley home in a leafy neighborhood of San Francisco, California.
Amid all the uncertainty, at least one thing does appear to have been settled. The Reg has learned that there will be no more JavaOne conferences under the new Oracle owner. Brokers close to the deal have been telling people Sun's annual JavaOne is finished, and it's believed the event will instead be rolled into Oracle's OpenWorld conference each fall.
Oracle declined to comment for this story. ®


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Research Chem House is a leading online Stote: a retail store and information site for health, beauty, wellness, personal care and pharmacy products. The Site is designed to provide a convenient, private and informative shopping experience for consumers to purchase products essential to healthy, everyday living. Accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Walgreens Pharma offers a larger selection of products than typical store-based retailers, along with a wealth of health-related information, buying guides and other tools designed to help consumers make educated purchasing decisions. Walgreens Pharma and its subsidiaries and affiliates ("we, us, our") want each visitor to the Site ("you") to have a safe, pleasurable visit, so we have established the following terms and conditions so that we (we and you) know what to expect from each other. By using the Site you agree to be bound by the terms set forth herein. We may make changes to the Site, these Terms of Use, or the policies and conditions that govern the use of the Site at any time. We encourage you to review the Site and these terms periodically for any updates or changes. Your continued access or use of the Site shall be deemed your acceptance of these changes and the reasonableness of these standards for notice of changes.
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Notice: this Wiki will be going read only early in 2024 and edits will no longer be possible. Please see: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/Wiki-shutdown-plan for the plan.
FAQ How do I open an editor on a file outside the workspace?
Since 3.3 you can use the new EFS support to open an text editor on a file outside the workspace:
String name = new FileDialog(aShell, SWT.OPEN).open(); if (name == null) return; IFileStore fileStore = EFS.getLocalFileSystem().getStore(new Path(filterPath)); fileStore = fileStore.getChild(names[i]); if (!fileStore.fetchInfo().isDirectory() && fileStore.fetchInfo().exists()) { IWorkbenchPage page= window.getActivePage(); try { IDE.openEditorOnFileStore(page, fileStore); } catch (PartInitException e) { /* some code */ } }
Alternatively, you can create a linked resource in an existing project, which points to a file elsewhere in the file system. This example snippet creates a project called "External Files," and then prompts the user to select any file in the file system. The code then creates a linked resource in the project to that external file, allowing the platform to open the file in read/write mode in one of the standard editors:
IWorkspace ws = ResourcesPlugin.getWorkspace(); IProject project = ws.getRoot().getProject("External Files"); if (!project.exists()) project.create(null); if (!project.isOpen()) project.open(null); Shell shell = window.getShell(); String name = new FileDialog(shell, SWT.OPEN).open(); if (name == null) return; IPath location = new Path(name); IFile file = project.getFile(location.lastSegment()); file.createLink(location, IResource.NONE, null); IWorkbenchPage page = window.getActivePage(); if (page != null) page.openEditor(file);
See Also:
- FAQ How do I accommodate project layouts that don't fit the Eclipse model?
- FAQ How do I open an editor programmatically?
- FAQ How do I open an editor on something that is not a file?
This FAQ was originally published in Official Eclipse 3.0 FAQs. Copyright 2004, Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. This text is made available here under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0.


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There has been a small resurgence in the last couple of decades of airships / zeppelins typically using Helium instead of the Hydrogen used in the olden days.
So I'm sure there must be plenty of places where you can do a joyflight or sightseeing loop and come back where you started.
But are there any places in the world where an airship / zeppelin is used for actual travel where you get on at one point and disembark at another?
(Extra points if the trip crosses international borders, large bodies of water, or both!)